Goodbye
by TheDevilsLovingBitch
Summary: Whoever thought that she of all people would want him? The "greasy git", the "bat of the dungeon". But it has been nearly twenty years since he has laid eyes on the woman he had come to love but... he finds on the wedding day of their daughter... that she is as beautiful as he remembers. SEVERUS SNAPE X KAGOME HIGURASHI. INUYASHA X HARRY POTTER. RATED T. implied CHARACTER DEATH.


**_Goodbye_** is a snippet a friend made on another account and they handed it off to me. It has absolutely nothing to do with Black Black Heart or the stand alone, Tainted. Just something I went over and adjusted in between classes.

Hope you enjoy.

At the day of his daughter's wedding Severus Snape comes across a portrait in the Malfoy Manor which is nearly a quarter of a century old.

_-.-_

_thoughts_

_*****mental conversations*****_

**_amplified thoughts/meanings_**

* * *

"Hello Severus," the voice, tainted with a soft accent that nearly made the voice musical and made it sound as if the speaker was seconds from laughing, caused Severus Snape to turn around.

Underneath his clothes every muscle was tensed, expecting the biting sting of some hex to wash across his skin. Even though years had passed since the rise and fall of Voldemort he had spent 17 years as a spy and there were things that even times of peace could not curb. His instinctual reaction for a battle had become so engrained into his body that he reacted on instinct, as easily as one would breathing. but it doesn't come. After a few steadying breathes, realizing no one is actually going to attack him, he relaxed and as he does his eyes drift to the right and slightly above? him, where the voice had come from.

_My god,_ dark coal tinted eyes widen as for one of the few times in his Severus Snape felt his usual indifference cracking. Good thing none of his students were around to see him as the infamously cold Potions Master gaped at the portrait against the wall.

It's not the indecency of the painting, in fact it is relatively innocent, as more it's the image that some gifted hand was capable of capturing. For a few brief heartbeats he struggled against the urge to simply give into desires and pinch himself, make sure that this wasn't some horrific dream he was having. But the pinch that causes a flicker of pain to cross his angular features does not cause the painting to dissolve, neither does the irritated rub of fingertips against eyes sore and tired from having to grade too many papers and lean over too many fuming cauldrons in the last week as classes wind to a close for Christmas holidays.

It takes him a few more seconds to realize that like most portraits it is charmed to animation… it wasn't his mind playing tricks on him... the painter had captured the woman's mischievousness perfectly in those blue eyes and the slight upwards curving of lips in a smirk. Those exotically blue eyes are following him and there's a hint of amusement in her expression that he had known well. She is glowing but it's not entirely the painter's work, there's the small but still noticeable bulge to her stomach and her hands are protectively placed overtop of where their unborn son had lain years ago. She'd **_never_** looked more beautiful in his eyes. There's a sensation, his fingertips are itching, to reach out and touch but he stills just inches from doing so. Doing so will just shatter the illusion further.

His own lips curve downwards as he addresses the living portrait of a woman that has been dead for twenty years. "Hello Kagome."

Kagome Livius-Snape, born Higurashi-Livius, his wife.

* * *

**FLASHBACK**

It's the feel of fingers brushing through his hair, despite claims otherwise the strands are not greasy but rather silken and fine giving it a lank "greasy" look, that tugs at his consciousness. Wakefulness is slow in coming, like dragging himself through mud. There's nothing more he would rather do than sleep. As it were, too many times had he felt the sting, the horrid pain, of the Cruciatus Curse and though the spell hadn't been used on him in years there were times when it did quite literally come back to bite him in the ass. He is sore and exhausted... and between this aching pain and grading papers had barely gotten any sleep throughout most of the week.

When coal tinted eyes do finally flicker open, he's aware of two concerned azure blue eyes starring back at him. The scent of vanilla and sandalwood touches his senses... not the remembered scent of blood and sweat and other fouled aromas... and he relaxes into her soft touch. "How are you feeling?"

The question is softly spoken, barely above a whisper for she knows that there is a headache pounding within his head... it feels like an entire damn band has taken up residence behind his eyes... without him asking for any to relieve the pain. She's a former Auror if she hasn't felt the Cruciatus Curse herself she has learnt everything about it as a means of combating the technique in fighting Dark Wizards. Cruciatus Curse is painful enough that the body will remember, locking muscles in agony, and rendering the victim tormented by their previous tortures. It will, eventually, break the victim be it their minds or their bodies if the victim is too weak to pull themselves out of the dreaded memory. Dark eyes flicker for a moment. Just how many times has she seen him at his weakest now?

"Severus?" The soft caress slows and then stills.

Wetting dry lips he responded, "I'm fine, Kagome."

But his wife, lips quirked remembering the scolding they had gotten from the Headmistress... the only thing that had saved from further embarrassment was that the students had been at lunch when he had asked **_that_** question five years ago, he hadn't been expecting her to "jump" him in the Care of Magical Beasts classroom of all places though he hadn't entirely protested her affections... was not satisfied with his response. "I'll get Poppy."

"I'm fine." He catches the disapproval in her eyes. Yes that was all he needed, another person to know how ill he took to the Cruciatus Curse. That Dumbledore had known was bad enough.

Surprise and alarm caused him to shift his weight, fingers reaching for her wrist to keep her from leaving, though the groan that escaped through clenched teeth at the sudden movement was just as effective a restraint. "Oh you stupid stubborn man."

Palm pressed against his forehead, that didn't relief the pressure, he couldn't help the quip that escaped. "And yet people praise my intelligence."

A snort, the concern wavering beneath amusement, before the slender Pure Blooded witch leaned down. The kiss is soft, tender but slowly deepening as he feels her fingers kneading his forearm... where the Dark Mark had once laid and which had disappeared at Voldemort's defeat... and despite that it takes all his self control not to cry out he raises the other hand to grip the back of her head. For six months she had been in Japan, her home country, helping her mother... and he missed her. He wanted to be inside her, sheathed as deeply as possible within her moist heat. Hear her cry out for him.

Once he may have loved Lily Evans, and had devoted himself to keeping her son, Harry Potter, alive but it was love built on a child's fantasy. The red head had been the only good thing in his dismissal rotten childhood. As an adult his tastes had changes for the small Asian woman with exotic blue eyes that didn't back down even against formal foes. And whom had said yes.

It is only when air becomes a necessity that she pulls back, voice a soft mutter of sound. "Let me get Poppy, and I'm all yours tonight."

He doesn't need to be a Slytherin to know he is getting the better deal. Grimacing Severus releases the slender woman.

**END FLASHBACK**

* * *

Something twists painfully inside of him and he's damn certain it's his heart. "You left me."

_Left me to raise our daughter... alone. _

He could barely tolerate the children from other parents. A toddler, even if it was his own flesh and blood, was beyond his coping abilities. His own parenting skills were less than stellar... not that he had had any real model to use for his father had abused him, his mother had usually locked herself in the bedrooms and ignored the going ons of the Snape household. It had not helped when the death of his wife, the former Auror known as Kagome Higurashi-Livius and then Kagome Livius-Snape, had torn at him so thoroughly that he had barely made the conscious effort to fed himself for the first month. Remus, he could not blame the werewolf who had survived the War for the red head was like a brother to Kagome, had had to bodily drag him out of his private lab on more than one occasion... and twice he had found himself in the hospital wing of Hogwarts because he had worked himself to exhaustion and blacked out.

So he is surprised that he hadn't ended up with the "Worse Father of the Year" for those first two years.

However, though he had never quite earned their praise or their trust again, his daughter happened to also be the daughter of one of the most predominant Aurors during the battle and who had served as a teacher in Hogwarts for many years. As it was, had Minerva McGonagall and Poppy Pomfrey not assisted he's pretty damn certain to this day that their daughter would be running around as a half wild child with less manners than he had. That was saying something for his abruptness was seconds from outright rudeness on a good day. Later, as the years had passed as his daughter had taken to becoming a young teenager, Narcissa Malfoy had taken over as the mother figure, having nearly died in nearly giving birth to Draco she had not had the chance of having her own daughter and dotted on his as if the little girl was flesh and blood.

Not expecting an answer... for these portraits have certain themes that they go on, they'll only answer certain words and certain phases and say certain responses... Severus scowls as the lightly accented voice touches his ears. "I'm still here."

His lips part, the urge to argue there, but another voice intrudes.

"Dad," she's twenty three years old but she still refuses to call him father. And now more than ever Severus is reminded of just how much of a spitting image Aimee Livius-Snape is to her mother. She inherited all of his sharp witted Slytherin nature but his barbed tongue is tempered just so by her mother's approachability that she was never isolated as a child. In a way he is thankful she never got any of his looks. "So this is where you…"

The rest of the sentence, "hiding", is swallowed as sharp blue eyes catch sight of what held his attention. Lucius never told him he had this portrait and if his old friend wasn't already six feet in the ground, having just lived long enough to see his grandson graduate at near top of his classes at Hogwarts, Severus knows he'd be sorely tempted to place the blonde there himself. Still despite his boiling anger, a vague part of him wishes Lucius was alive. He is Headmaster of Hogwarts now, having taken the position from McGonagall when the woman retired, so he wouldn't be foolish enough to attack the Malfoy in the open. He'd just like to know if his gut instinct is right and the portrait was done before that incident which had stolen his wife from him.

A soft hand on his forearm drags his attention to blue eyes that are the same shade as the woman in the portrait but are too analytical to be the exact same. She does not possess her mother's playful nature, the same teasing attitude that had caught his attention and soothed his wounded heart all those years ago. "Aimee?"

"Is this," the young woman, she looks very much like a little girl as she considers the portrait, swallows eyes flickering to him and then back to the painting, "is this mother?"

She's been told enough times by teachers and friends and himself of the striking resemblance between her and the ex-Auror, who for a year would become a Professor of Defense Against Dark Arts… oh how her mother had raged when he had weaseled it so she couldn't work in such a field and then not as a Professor for she refused Herbology telling him he couldn't rule her life just because she was pregnant… that Aimee knows without asking that it is anyways.

As it was, she had been just three when her mother died.

Just three years old, red faced and screaming her lungs to the heavens when he discovered his daughter trying to rouse his unconscious wife from where she had collapsed beside the hearth. They'd gone shopping for "da-da" as it was his birthday in two weeks time. Five sleepless nights by the bedside, five days where he barely picks at the food set before him for he refuses to leave, and the moment exhaustion **_finally_** claims him he wakes up in the morning to realize his wife, Kagome Livius-Snape, will never wake up. No more teasing smirks or lightly barbed jabs that keep him on his toes and make the boredom of dealing with students more passable. No more soft hands against his skin, stroking caressing… those deliciously needy moans as he lays claim to her. She'd been so animated just the night before her collapse, curled against him, rambling off names despite how he'd been so tired from grading papers he can barely muster a grunt when a name strikes his fancy for the 4 month old boy growing within her womb.

Two months later he buries Kagome Livius-Snape and Joseph Livius-Snape. He's numb and barely says anymore than two words. Barely even has the strength to acknowledge a single soul despite the turnout of teachers, of students both old and new, of respectful Aurors that either knew of her or worked with her, and of ex-members of the Order.

When he asks the Healers the answers are vague.

Some of them claim that it is the plague of a Pure Blood woman. As it is, most females who are Pure Blood can only have one maybe two children... it's an age old belief that it's the method of God, though he has long since ceased to believe in such a being, to keep Pure Bloods from overrunning the world... and as such no one has ever figured out how Molly survived to have the Weasley brood. But Kagome is from an ancient family, the Livius nearly as powerful as the Malfoy were a century ago and unlike most of the UK or European blooded families the Livius never believed in marrying their cousins. Her mother is Japanese, from an old family of mikos who themselves are a different sort of "witch" in a ways, and that infusion of Asian blood should have eliminated what little inbreeding was in her veins.

Others are even more remote with their answers. It could have been the flu for she had been complaining of headaches. Or some dark magic that he hadn't sensed and which had lay dormant since the year before when Kingsley had asked her to help her fellow Aurors… no-one could give him a straight answer and that had turned disbelief to a white hot fury. Those handful of Death Eaters he knew were still in hiding had not met a quick death when he had found them. And he had come very close to killing Lucius Malfoy, who had just barely survived the Second Wizarding War himself, regardless of their long lasting friendship when the Pure Blood had finally tracked him down.

* * *

**FLASHBACK [20 years earlier]**

Despite the numerous wounds, the split lip and that his left eye was swollen shut, Lucius Malfoy still had a hell of a powerful grip as the Pure Blood knotted fists in the torn cloth of his robes. Too much energy was wasted for magic and Severus can feel the cloth slowly tightening around his throat. The blonde must have noticed, felt the tightening cloth himself, for he's given a shake much like some rat. "What are you doing, you stupid git? Trying to get yourself killed?"

"Yes." Twice now he has come close to death's doorstep the only thing that saved him against the former Dearth Eaters and still practicing Dark Wizards is that he wants to… and his cold ruthlessness makes him far more deadly than those still wanting to live.

There's another shake and then Lucius releases his near strangle hold, a growl that would have made the werewolf Lupin proud easing through bruised lips. Brushing fingers through hair, any semblance of order is long gone, the blonde steps back. Severus catches the look… the same look the other teachers had given him… and sneers. He doesn't want pity. "How she feel in love with a selfish inconsiderate bastard like you, I've always wondered."

"Don't," his wife was as Pure Blooded as the Malfoy, and the Livius family was once nearly as powerful before they had started to "fall" in the 1900s, and he knew that the blonde always had respect for her. Desired her once.

"Aimee just lost her mother," there is a hint of a smirk at the thought of his goddaughter, a role Severus had once played as godfather to Draco, "and instead of being there her father is off terrorizing half of the entire Wizarding Community trying to get himself killed."

_Aimee?_ For a moment a ghostly image of a newborn with curly black hair and wide blue eyes flickers against the back of his eyelids. She is so small. He can almost feel warm lips against his cheek, that calm reassure… a soft laugh when he protests… that he's doing fine for though he is holding the infant correctly it's almost as if he is expecting her to explode at any moment.

The furious glare from the Malfoy leader keeps him from responding. After a moment Lucius continued. "She's scared, no **_terrified_**, Severus. She refuses to leave Narcissa for any more than an hour at the most. **_My_ **wife, Severus, has had to sleep in a guest room with _**your**_ daughter for the last month otherwise she will not sleep. When she's not calm, she cries for her mother but when Kagome doesn't come she will scream for her father… for **_you_**… without stop."

"Lucius." It comes out as a gasp, weaker than he has ever heard himself. He hurts but it has nothing to do with his exhaustion or the still bleeding wounds on his body.

"I know my friend," a pause and he feels the other male helping him up. "Kagome was a wonderful woman; smart, witty, fearsome if she tolerated your temper for so long. And she brought out a side of you I haven't seen since… the Potters died. But killing yourself is not going to bring her back… and your daughter desperately needs her father back."

**END FLASHBACK**

* * *

"Aimee. Headmaster Snape." The voice is surprised and he glances over his shoulder to the door of the small reading room, off of the library, to the blonde that has stopped in the doorway. Scorpius is no Lucius. He doesn't have his grandfather's elegant features but rather a stronger jaw and heavier eyebrows. Not a pretty boy like his old friend but frighteningly sharp if a little mellow for a Malfoy. But he has long since forgiven the younger man his faults, the Malfoy adores Aimee nearly as much as Severus himself does. "I... didn't..."

Severus snorts at the boy's stammer, but his daughter has caught sight of her intended and there is a shouted complaint about tradition... that brides and grooms are not supposed to see one another... and Severus lets his daughter pull him towards the exit as the poor Malfoy diverts his gaze in the face of her temper. But then dignity kicks in, he is Headmaster of Hogwarts and has been for the last eight years, and straightening himself he offers his daughter his arm. She glares at him from the corner of her eye, her face flushing the color of a ripe tomato when she hears his soft chuckle... gods she is so like her mother in that fashion, in that she would act so gravely insulted and yet with a gentle grin she accepts the offered limb. He leads, she follows even when he hesitates for a moment at the threshold.

"Goodbye Severus."

He almost swears the portrait is laughing at his change in personality, he is still a bastard to most people but he has calmed a bit, if portraits could do anything outside of what they are charmed to do. But it's enough of a boost that he's actually smiling when he leads his daughter down the aisle to where the Malfoy is standing with of all people the two Potter boys... best men... who he terrorized in their time at Hogwarts. That all three look like they are going to faint only makes the smirk grow all that wider.

_Goodbye Kagome._

* * *

**PAIRING:** Kagome Higurashi x Severus Snape

AIMEE - beloved


End file.
